My 6 year old boy and I took this net to the beach and caught a lot of sand ;-) during this first try, but also lots of zooplankton. How much fun! It is easy to use, and includes a guide to identify the most common fresh- and saltwater zooplankton species. Since we didn't do it correctly (we didn't pull the net through the water for 2 minutes) as was suggested on the description, we might have caught not enough plankton to be able to determine the species, but at least we were able to see little creatures moving. Sooo cool! I expect to see even more next time when we do it more patiently. I already bought more of these nets as gifts for other little friends. The one thing I noticed that there seems to be a tiny leak in the flask, however, the leak was only minor and didn't bother for the play at the beach. Absolutely love it !

My children, 7 and 12, and I went to the pier in Monterey California. We put the net in the water and ran up and down. We pulled up a wide variety of baby crabs and baby fish. We were able to see them with the lens in the collecting jar. My kids had a lot of fun. Since then they have repeatedly asked me to go back out and do it again. My son took it on a field trip with his class and it was a great hit with all his classmates.It is a great tool to teach about biology. One could easily design lessons about zooplankton, food webs, life-cycles and use this plankton net to give the students hands-on experience.